Recent years have seen a shift by a major manufacturer of bowling equipment, the assignee of the instant application, to a wholly new design of automatic pinsetter, sometimes also referred to as a gamesetter. The shift in part is due to the new design having greater flexibility in setting differing pin combinations of less than all 10 pins employed in conventional bowling. The ability to set different combinations allows the establishment of a large variety of bowling games that may be scored on any of a variety of bases quite different from ordinary 10 pin bowling. It also facilitates the setting of various pin combinations for practice purposes.
The operating principals of pinsetters of this type are disclosed in a number of patents to August Schmid of Switzerland, including, but not limited to, U.S. Pat. Nos. 3, 809, 398 issued May 7, 1984; 3,810,617 issued May 14, 1974; 3,966,206 issued Jun. 29, 1976; and 4,813,673 issued Mar. 21, 1989; the details of all of which are herein incorporated by reference.
Commercially available pinsetters of this sort employ a pin distribution system generally as illustrated in the previously identified U.S. Pat. No. 4,813,673. In this system, two distinct transport systems are employed, one for delivering pins to 10 pin bowling positions 3, 6, 9 and 10. A second transport system delivers pins to positions corresponding to the 1 pin, 2 pin, 4 pin, 5 pin, 7
pin and 8 pin. That is to say, one transport system delivers pins to four pin positions while the other delivers pins to six pin positions.
The '673 patent, and commonly assigned Brim et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,152,525 issued Oct. 6, 1992, feature the use of pin diverters which receive pins from a pin elevator that elevates fallen pins out of the pit for the bowling lane being served by the automatic pinsetter and diverts alternate pins to one or the other of the two transport systems. While this works well for the intended purpose, because one transport system series more pins than the other, and both are receiving the same number of pins over a given period of time, it is necessary that the transport system serving the fewer pin positions have an overflow whereby the excess pins that are not directed to pin stations or pin spotting cells associated with the various pin positions on the pinsetter can overflow and be returned to the pit. Furthermore, even with the transport system serving the greater number of pin positions, there occasionally arises a need to overflow pins back to the pit as, for example, when all pin stations are already loaded with pins. Typical commercially available versions of these types of pinsetters overflow 10-12 pins per frame.
The overflow is not particularly desirable. For one, because it necessarily means that pins are constantly being overflowed, there is increased wear on the pins because they are continually in motion except when spotted on the lane. There is also increased wear on the pinsetter because of the repetitive handling of pins that are being overflowed.
Furthermore, overflow is not desirable from the aesthetic standpoint. As is well known, the falling of pins in a bowling game generates considerable noise. The overflowing of pins similarly generates noise and thus increases the noise level in a bowling establishment. Reduction in such noise level would be highly desirable.
In addition to wear and noise, overflow is undesirable for other reasons as well. Those familiar with automatic pinsetters recognize that occasionally, so-called "pin jams" occur which require manual attention before automatic operation of the pinsetter may resume. Pin jams occur on a statistical basis in proportion to the number of pins handled. Consequently, if the number of pins handled by a pinsetter during a given scoring frame can be reduced, the rate of occurrence of pin jams will be commensurately reduced as will the need for manual intervention. Thus, reduction of pin overflow can also serve to increase reliability of an automatic pinsetter operation by reducing the occurrence of pin jams.
Thus, there is a real need for a new and improved automatic pinsetter having the advantages of flexibility in pin setting of automatic pinsetters made according to the Schmid patents and yet with minimized overflow to avoid the problems caused by wear, increased noise level and pin jams. The present invention is directed to meeting that need.